Packing the Court: The Rise of Judicial Power and the Coming Crisis of the Supreme Court

by James Macgregor Burns

George D. Braden, “Mr. Justice Minton and the Truman Bloc,” Indiana Law Journal, vol. 26, no. 2 (Winter 1951), pp. 153-68.

  James F. Byrnes, All in One Lifetime (Harper & Brothers, 1958), part 3.

  Marquis W. Childs, “The Supreme Court To-Day,” Harper’s, vol. 176 (May 1938), pp. 581-88.

  Tom Clark, “Reminiscences of an Attorney General Turned Associate Justice,” Houston Law Review, vol. 6, no. 4 (March 1969), pp. 623-29.

  Richard C. Cortner, The Supreme Court and the Second Bill of Rights: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Nationalization of Civil Liberties (University of Wisconsin Press, 1981).

  William Domnarski, The Great Justices, 1941-54: Black, Douglas, Frankfurter & Jackson in Chambers (University of Michigan Press, 2006).

  William O. Douglas, The Court Years, 1939 -1975 (Random House, 1980).

  William O. Douglas, “Diary,” Philip E. Urofsky, ed., Journal of Supreme Court History, vol. 1995 (1995), pp. 80-112.

  William O. Douglas, Go East, Young Man: The Early Years (Random House, 1974).

  Gerald T. Dunne, Hugo Black and the Judicial Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 1977).

  John D. Fassett, New Deal Justice: The Life of Stanley Reed of Kentucky (Vantage Press, 1994).

  John M. Ferren, Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court: The Story of Justice Wiley Rutledge (University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

  John P. Frank, “Fred Vinson and the Chief Justiceship,” University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 21, no. 2 (Winter 1954), pp. 212-46.

  Max Freedman, ed., Roosevelt and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1928-1945 (Little, Brown, 1967).

  Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, eds., The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789 -1969 (Chelsea House, 1969-78), vols. 3-4.

  Eugene C. Gerhart, America’s Advocate: Robert H. Jackson (Bobbs-Merrill, 1958).

  Linda C. Gugin and James E. St. Clair, Sherman Minton: New Deal Senator, Cold War Justice (Indiana Historical Society, 1997).

  Walton Hamilton, “Preview of a Justice” (Felix Frankfurter), Yale Law Journal, vol. 48, no. 5 (March 1939), pp. 819-38.

  Fowler V. Harper, Justice Rutledge and the Bright Constellation (Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).

  Robert Harrison, “The Breakup of the Roosevelt Supreme Court: The Contribution of History and Biography,” Law and History Review, vol. 2, no. 2 (Autumn 1984), pp. 165-221.

  Jeffrey D. Hockett, New Deal Justice: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Hugo L. Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert H. Jackson (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).

  J. Woodford Howard, Jr., Mr. Justice Murphy (Princeton University Press, 1968).

  Dennis J. Hutchinson, “‘The Achilles Heel’ of the Constitution: Justice Jackson and the Japanese Exclusion Cases,” Supreme Court Review, vol. 2002 (2002), pp. 455-94.

  Dennis J. Hutchinson, “The Black-Jackson Feud,” Supreme Court Review, vol. 1988 (1988), pp. 203-43.

  Peter Irons, Justice at War (Oxford University Press, 1983).

  Peter Irons, A People’s History of the Supreme Court (Viking, 1999), chs. 25-28.

  Joseph P. Lash, ed., From the Diaries of Felix Frankfurter (W. W. Norton, 1975).

  William E. Leuchtenburg, The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt (Oxford University Press, 1995).

  Stefanie A. Lindquist et al., “The Impact of Presidential Appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court: Cohesive and Divisive Voting Within Presidential Blocs,” Political Research Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 4 (December 2000), pp. 795-814.

  Constance L. Martin, “The Life and Career of Justice Robert H. Jackson,” Journal of Supreme Court History, vol. 33, no. 1 (March 2008), pp. 42-67.

  Alpheus T. Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law (Viking, 1956).

  Alpheus T. Mason, The Supreme Court from Taft to Warren (Louisiana State University Press, 1958), esp. ch. 4.

  Robert G. McCloskey, The Modern Supreme Court (Harvard University Press, 1972).

  Wesley McCune, The Nine Young Men (Harper & Brothers, 1947).

  Wallace Mendelson, “Mr. Justice Frankfurter and the Process of Judicial Review,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol. 103, no. 3 (December 1954), pp. 295-320.

  Bruce Allen Murphy, Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas (Random House, 2003).

  Paul L. Murphy, The Constitution in Crisis Times, 1918-1969 (Harper & Row, 1972), chs. 5-9.

  Roger K. Newman, Hugo Black (Pantheon, 1994).

  David M. O’Brien, “Packing the Supreme Court,” Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 62, no. 2 (Spring 1986), pp. 189-212.

  Richard L. Pacelle, Jr., The Transformation of the Supreme Court’s Agenda: From the New Deal to the Reagan Administration (Westview Press, 1991).

  Michael E. Parrish, “Cold War Justice: The Supreme Court and the Rosenbergs,” American Historical Review, vol. 82, no. 4 (October 1977), pp. 805-42.

  Michael E. Parrish, The Hughes Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy (ABC-CLIO, 2002).

  William Petit, “Justice Byrnes and the United States Supreme Court,” South Carolina Law Quarterly, vol. 6 (1954), pp. 423-28.

  C. Herman Pritchett, Civil Liberties and the Vinson Court (University of Chicago Press, 1954).

  C. Herman Pritchett, “The President and the Supreme Court,” Journal of Politics, vol. 11, no. 1 (February 1949), pp. 80-92.

  C. Herman Pritchett, The Roosevelt Court: A Study in Judicial Politics and Values, 1937 -1947 (Macmillan, 1948).

  Peter G. Renstrom, The Stone Court: Justices, Rulings, and Legacy (ABC-CLIO, 2001).

  Frances Howell Rudko, Truman’s Court: A Study in Judicial Restraint (Greenwood Press, 1988).

  James E. St. Clair and Linda C. Gugin, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson of Kentucky (University Press of Kentucky, 2002).

  Bernard Schwartz, The Supreme Court: Constitutional Revolution in Retrospect (Ronald Press, 1957).

  John F. Simon, The Antagonists: Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Civil Liberties in Modern America (Simon and Schuster, 1989).

  Robert J. Steamer, Chief Justice: Leadership and the Supreme Court (University of South Carolina Press, 1986).

  Steve Suitts, Hugo Black of Alabama (NewSouth Books, 2005).

  William F. Swindler, Court and Constitution in the Twentieth Century: The New Legality, 1932 -1968 (Bobbs-Merrill, 1970).

  Jacobus tenBroek et al., Prejudice, War, and the Constitution (University of California Press, 1954).

  Melvin I. Urofsky, “Conflict Among the Brethren,” Duke Law Journal, vol. 1988, no. 1 (February 1988), pp. 71-113.

  Melvin I. Urofsky, Division and Discord: The Supreme Court Under Stone and Vinson, 1941- 1953 (University of South Carolina Press, 1997).

  Melvin I. Urofsky, “The Roosevelt Court,” in William H. Chafe, ed., The Achievement of American Liberalism: The New Deal and Its Legacies (Columbia University Press, 2003), pp. 63-98.

  G. Edward White, The Constitution and the New Deal (Harvard University Press, 2000).

  William M. Wiecek, The Birth of the Modern Constitution: The United States Supreme Court, 1941-1953, vol. 12 of History of the Supreme Court of the United States (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

  David A. Yalof, Pursuit of Justices: Presidential Politics and the Selection of Supreme Court Nominees (University of Chicago Press, 1999), ch. 2.

  Tinsley E. Yarbrough, Mr. Justice Black and His Critics (Duke University Press, 1988).

  157 [Roberts’s dissents, 1945] : Wiecek, p. 71.

  158 [“absolute anomaly”] : Joseph Alsop and Turner Catledge, The 168 Days (Doubleday, Doran, 1938), p. 300.

  158 [“have to take him”] : James A. Farley, Jim Farley’s Story (McGraw-Hill, 1948), p. 98.

  158 [“worst insult”] : Edward E. Cox, quoted in “Selection of Black Splits Congress,” New York Times, August 13, 1937, pp. 1, 4, at p. 4.

  158 [“did the trick ”] : quoted in Farley, p. 100.

  159 [“presidential boner”] : Kiplinger Washington Letter, September 18, 1937, quoted in Leuchtenburg, p. 195.


  159 [“Well, Stanley”] : quoted in Fassett, p. 198.

  159 [“half brother”] : quoted in Wiecek, p. 85.

  160 [“give the Jew baiters”] : White to Paul Kellogg, letter of September 16, 1938, in White, Selected Letters, 1899-1943, Walter Johnson, ed. (Henry Holt, 1947), pp. 389-90, quoted at p. 390.

  160 [“identified the Constitution”] : memorandum for FDR, February 18, 1937, in Freedman, pp. 384-87, quoted at p. 386.

  160 [“You know”] : Frankfurter, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (Reynal, 1960), p. 283.

  161 [“new job for you”] : quoted in Douglas, Go East, p. 463.

  161 [“Catholic piety”] : Wiecek, p. 100.

  161 [“broader view”] : quoted in Howard, p. 232.

  162 [“losing the smoothest”] : McCune, p. 244.

  163 [“don’t think I can stand”] : quoted in Urofsky, Division and Discord, p. 28.

  163 [“assistant President”] : Walter F. Murphy, “James F. Byrnes,” in Friedman and Israel, vol. 4, pp. 2517-33, quoted at p. 2530.

  164 [“not a radical”] : Fred L. Israel, “Wiley Rutledge,” in ibid., vol. 4, pp. 2593-2601, quoted at p. 2593.

  164 [Hughes on chief justice] : Hughes, The Supreme Court of the United States: Its Foundation, Methods, and Achievements (Columbia University Press, 1928), p. 58.

  164 [Frankfurter on Hughes] : Frankfurter, “Chief Justices I Have Known,” Virginia Law Review, vol. 39, no. 7 (November 1953), pp. 883-905, quoted at p. 901.

  164 [“don’t work for Hughes”] : quoted in Douglas, The Court Years, p. 219.

  164 [“not a philosopher”] : Steamer, p. 74.

  165 [“With Sutherland off ”] : Stone to his sons, letter of February 10, 1938, quoted in Mason, Stone, p. 488.

  165 [“fatal way”] : quoted in ibid., p. 487.

  166 [Carolene] : 304 U.S. 144 (1938), quoted at 152-53.

  167 [Edwards] : 314 U.S. 160 (1941).

  167 [Stone on “the job”] : Stone to Sterling Carr, letter of November 25, 1941, quoted in Mason, Stone, p. 580.

  167 [ Journal on justices] : Eugene S. Duffield, “Yesterday Was the First ‘Decision Day’ This Term Without Noisy Dissent,” Wall Street Journal, November 25, 1941, p. 3.

  167 [Nonunanimous opinions] : Urofsky, Division and Discord, p. 40.

  167 [“Collection of fleas”] : Stone to Sterling Carr, letter of June 13, 1943, quoted in ibid., p. 40.

  168 [“mischievous phrase”] : Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77 (1949), Frankfurter’s concurrence quoted at 91, 92.

  169 [“national unity”] : Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940), quoted at 595.

  169 [“too tight a rein”] : Frankfurter to Stone, note of May 27, 1940, quoted in Mason, Stone, p. 527.

  169 [“vulgar intrusion”] : Stone to Frankfurter, undated note, quoted in ibid., p. 527.

  169 [“searching judicial inquiry”] : Gobitis, quoted at 606.

  169 [“between legislatively allowable”] : note of May 27, 1940, quoted in Wiecek, p. 222.

  169 [Opelika] : 316 U.S. 584 (1942), Black, Douglas, and Murphy quoted at 624; Stone at 608.

  170 [Barnette] : 319 U.S. 624 (1943), Jackson quoted at 642; Frankfurter at 649, 648, 666, respectively.

  170 [Murdock] : 319 U.S. 105 (1943), quoted at 115.

  171 [“holy cause”] : Frankfurter conference notes, December 5, 1942, quoted in Urofsky, Division and Discord, p. 53.

  171 [“Criticism of ”] : Schneiderman, 320 U.S. 118 (1943), quoted at 138.

  171 [“appeal to reason”] : Milk Wagon Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor Dairies, 312 U.S. 287 (1941), quoted at 293.

  172 [“to hell with habeas corpus”] : quoted in tenBroek et al., p. 86.

  172 [“nobody’s constitutional rights”] : Lippmann, “The Fifth Column on the Coast,” Washington Post, February 12, 1942, p. 9.

  172 [Hirabayashi] : 320 U.S. 81 (1943), quoted at 93.

  173 [Korematsu] : 323 U.S. 214 (1944), Black ’s opinion quoted at 219, 218, respectively; see also Mason, Stone, pp. 677-78.

  173 [“always regretted”] : Douglas, Court Years, p. 280.

  173 [Endo] : 323 U.S. 283 (1944).

  173 [“once loyalty is shown”] : Douglas’s conference notes, October 16, 1944, quoted in Ball and Cooper, p. 115.

  173 [“legalization of racism”] : Korematsu, quoted at 242.

  174 [“Olympian infallibility”] : quoted in Mason, Stone, p. 798.

  174 [“smooth over the discords”] : Felix Belair, Jr., “Vinson Named Chief Justice,” New York Times, June 7, 1946, pp. 1, 4, quoted at p. 1.

  175 [“secret, conspiratorial”] : quoted in Wiecek, pp. 543, 544.

  175 [“Congress was not forbidden”] : Dennis v. U.S., 341 U.S. 494 (1951), quoted at 552.

  176 [“diabolical conspiracy”] : U.S. district judge Irving Kaufman, quoted in Parrish, p. 811.

  176 [“before we allow”] : the text of Douglas’s stay is reprinted as an appendix to his dissent in Rosenberg v. U.S., 346 U.S. 273 (1953), quoted at 321.

  176 [“race for death”] : quoted in Wiecek, p. 616.

  176 [“loyalty-security mania”] : Alexander M. Bickel, The Supreme Court and the Idea of Progress (Harper & Row, 1970), p. 5.

  176 [“History teaches”] : Dennis, 525.

  CHAPTER TEN-LEADERSHIP: THE WARREN COURT

  Henry J. Abraham, Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court, 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press, 1992), ch. 10.

  Howard Ball and Phillip J. Cooper, “Fighting Justices: Hugo L. Black and William O. Douglas and Supreme Court Conflict,” American Journal of Legal History, vol. 38, no. 1 (January 1994), pp. 1-37.

  William M. Beaney, “The Warren Court and the Political Process,” Michigan Law Review, vol. 67, no. 2 (December 1968), pp. 343-52.

  Michal R. Belknap, “The Warren Court and Equality,” in Sandra F. VanBurkleo et al., eds., Constitutionalism and American Culture (University Press of Kansas, 2002), pp. 211-39.

  Alexander M. Bickel, The Supreme Court and the Idea of Progress (Harper & Row, 1970).

  Herbert Brownell, Advising Ike (University Press of Kansas, 1993).

  Joseph A. Califano, Jr., The Triumph & Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years (Simon and Schuster, 1991).

  James E. Clayton, The Making of Justice: The Supreme Court in Action (E. P. Dutton, 1964).

  Richard C. Cortner, The Supreme Court and the Second Bill of Rights: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Nationalization of Civil Liberties (University of Wisconsin Press, 1981).

  Archibald Cox, The Warren Court: Constitutional Decision as an Instrument of Reform (Harvard University Press, 1968).

  Michael D. Davis and Hunter R. Clark, Thurgood Marshall: Warrior at the Bar, Rebel on the Bench (Birch Lane Press, 1992).

  William O. Douglas, The Court Years, 1939-1975 (Random House, 1980).

  Kim Isaac Eisler, A Justice for All: William J. Brennan, Jr., and the Decisions That Transformed America (Simon and Schuster, 1993).

  Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, eds., The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789-1969 (Chelsea House, 1969-78), vol. 4.

  Fred P. Graham, The Self-Inflicted Wound (Macmillan, 1970).

  Morton J. Horwitz, The Warren Court and the Pursuit of Justice (Hill and Wang, 1998).

  Dennis J. Hutchinson, “ ‘The Ideal New Frontier Judge’ ” (Byron White), Supreme Court Review, vol. 1997 (1997), pp. 373-402.

  Dennis J. Hutchinson, The Man Who Once Was Whizzer White (Free Press, 1998).

  Dennis J. Hutchinson, “The Man Who Once Was Whizzer White,” Yale Law Journal, vol. 103, no. 1 (October 1993), pp. 43-56.

  Peter Irons, A People’s History of the Supreme Court (Viking, 1999), chs. 29-31.

  Ronald Kahn, The Supreme Court and Constitutional Theory, 1953 -1993 (University Press of Kansas, 1994), chs. 2-3.

  Thomas M. Keck, The Most Activist Supreme Court in History: The Road to Modern Judicial Conservatism (University of Chicago Press, 2004), esp. chs. 2-3.<
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  Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2004).

  Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (Alfred A. Knopf, 1976).

  Philip B. Kurland, “Earl Warren, the ‘Warren Court,’ and the Warren Myths,” Michigan Law Review, vol. 67, no. 2 (December 1968), pp. 353-58.

  Philip B. Kurland, Politics, the Constitution, and the Warren Court (University of Chicago Press, 1970).

  Clifford M. Lytle, The Warren Court & Its Critics (University of Arizona Press, 1968).

  David E. Marion, The Jurisprudence of Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997).

  Alpheus T. Mason, “Judicial Activism: Old and New,” Virginia Law Review, vol. 55, no. 3 (April 1969), pp. 385-426.

  Alpheus T. Mason, “Understanding the Warren Court: Judicial Self-Restraint and Judicial Duty,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 81, no. 4 (December 1966), pp. 523-63.

  John Massaro, “LBJ and the Fortas Nomination for Chief Justice,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 97, no. 4 (Winter 1982-83), pp. 603-21.

  Michael S. Mayer, “With Much Deliberation and Some Speed: Eisenhower and the Brown Decision,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 52, no. 1 (February 1986), pp. 43-76.

  Bruce Allen Murphy, Fortas: The Rise and Ruin of a Supreme Court Justice (William Morrow, 1988).

  Paul L. Murphy, The Constitution in Crisis Times, 1918-1969 (Harper & Row, 1972), chs. 10-13.

  Jim Newton, Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made (Riverhead, 2006).

  David M. O’Brien, “LBJ and Supreme Court Politics in the Light of History,” in Bernard J. Firestone and Robert C. Vogt, eds., Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Uses of Power (Greenwood Press, 1988), pp. 149-60.

  James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (Oxford University Press, 2001).

  Jack Harrison Pollack, Earl Warren: The Judge Who Changed America (Prentice-Hall, 1979).

  Lucas A. Powe, Jr., The Warren Court and American Politics (Belknap Press, 2000).

  C. Herman Pritchett, Congress Versus the Supreme Court, 1957-1960 (University of Minnesota Press, 1961).

  Bernard Schwartz, Decision: How the Supreme Court Decides Cases (Oxford University Press, 1996).